Broadcaster SCA has tightened costs with revenue and profit under pressure from a "challenging" advertising market.
The company reported revenue down 2.9% to $252.6 million for the half year to December and net profit after tax at $4.4 million, a drop of 71.1%.
SCA says its strategic cost management review is ahead of target and will deliver about $20 million in savings in the current financial year.
The company says "ad markets remain challenging" but SCA broadcast radio revenues are tracking ahead of the market.
“SCA maintained and expanded monetisable audiences to record levels in our core radio and digital audio markets during the period," says SCA CEO John Kelly.
"Importantly, our national leadership in the core buying demographics of men and women aged 25 to 54 provides our sales teams with a platform for growth in the second half and beyond.
“The impact of lower industry-wide national advertising expenditure was mitigated by the geographic diversity of SCA’s radio portfolio comprising 10 stations in Metro markets and 78 in Regional markets. Fuelled by robust performance from local advertisers, Regional Radio revenues grew by 2.%."
The number of users signed up to LiSTNR rose 60% to 1.8 million. “LiSTNR’s monetisable podcast audience network of around 7.4 million monthly listeners.
Digital audio revenue was up 27% to $15.6 million.
“Our strategic cost management review has delivered significant cash savings, setting us up for improved results in the second half of this year and future years," says Kelly.
"And completion of our major digitisation investment cycle is enabling teams across all parts of our network to generate further savings and open revenue opportunities by optimising business operations and workflows.
“Regional television revenues continued to contract. We were pleased, however, to extend our affiliation with our principal programming partner, Network 10. The growing collaboration between our national sales teams in recent months has seen our power ratio – measuring conversion of ratings to revenue – return to above 100% in the four east coast aggregated markets.
“SCA teams around the country remain focused, committed, and passionate about our strategy, operating momentum, and outlook.”
Numbers for the half year to December 2023:
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